


Red Scarf

by aderyn



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Alternate Universe - Little Red Riding Hood, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fairy Tales, Fractured Fairy Tale, The Adventure of the Empty House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:52:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basketful of sorrow, lost in the wild, not knowing for once his compass. </p>
<p>“Don’t you want to run with me?” the wolf said at tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Scarf

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [justgot1](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Justgot1/pseuds/Justgot1), with good cheer.

_“So she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into the wood.”—J. and W. Grimm_

Sometimes in the house of the dead Molly bares her teeth.

It’s a reminder of a young boy (no, a man) red-scarfed, basketful of sorrow, lost in the wild, not knowing for once his compass. Needing her alkaloids and her blades and her charts.

Sherlock killed the wolf on the roof and came to her for death.

*******

There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to go but up. Sherlock flung a hood over his dark head and ran.

“Don’t you want to run with me?” the wolf said at tea.

Sherlock smiled and poured. “I’ll be grandmother,” he said.

“Don’t you want to pick some flowers?” the wolf said.

_Don’t you want to kiss him goodbye._

*******

John, hunter, gatherer, bearer of arms, looked up weeping, arrived in time for the ruined scarf and the brook of blood.

*******

It's years before the wolf’s body falls from the roof. The she-wolf below hears the curse lift and sends a code in carmine to grandmother.

“Yes,” Mycroft says, “the time’s come.”

Sherlock throws off the hood and runs, far through the weeping oaks to John’s door.

“Do you still love me?”

“With my heart and my arms,” John says, swallows the bitterness of the stream.

“But swear to me love, next time you go into the forest, put me in your basket.”


End file.
